From A Lonely Titans Tower
by Crystal Allen
Summary: Terra does not belong to Slade, and she does not belong to the Titans. She is a villain, and a hero, and herself... and she has a plan. A look from a different perspective on the events that led to Terra's downfall.


Disclaimer: I do not own Teen Titans.

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"_Oh my friends, my friends, forgive me_

_That I live and you are gone._

_There's a grief that can't be spoken,_

_There's a pain goes on and on."_

-'Empty Chairs at Empty Tables', from the musical _Les Miserables_

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The moment that Terra heard the question: "_And will you destroy the Teen Titans_?" in Slade's deadly-soft voice, she had known with the utmost certainty that she wouldn't do it. But she had answered her master: "I thought you'd never ask," and she had grinned her most convincingly wicked grin. And in the hot volcanic light pouring in on her from the window, she had begun to formulate a plan. Slade never suspected till the very end. Terra was a wonderful liar, as she had had plenty of experience.

Oh, she could have done it if she'd wanted to; she was strong enough. Her results had proven that.

But the reason that she had no regrets now was that she had spared her friends' lives, and given them the key to bringing down her master, just in case she herself should fail.

Terra had never been one for strategizing. That had always been Robin's forte, and Slade's. But for the sake of her friends, and Jump City, she had come up with a plan. A good one, as it turned out.

What it really came down to was acting.

Terra wasn't evil. She wasn't spiteful, or even mean. She had tried to be those things, and failed, just as she had failed at being a Titan.

She had failed at being a Titan because she had been working for Slade. She had failed at being a super villain because it just wasn't in her to be one, but she hadn't known that soon enough.

All that had remained was how to fix what she had already destroyed. Though she found herself suspended somewhere between the labels of 'hero' and 'villain', Terra knew that she was closer, albeit minimally, to the title of 'hero'. Heroes took responsibility. Heroes protected. So, in the guise of Slade's apprentice, that's what Terra would do.

But she still needed to get her former team-mates out of the way for a while. That's where the acting came in.

The preliminaries against all five of the Titans were just that. Preliminaries. Sort of like an opening act. Impressive all around, but they didn't accomplish much. Terra had done more damage to the T-car than to her former teammates. She had emerged from their battle knowing that she had left them bruised, certainly, but not beaten. She knew that her only chance – and theirs – was to bring them down separately. And Slade, who was watching her every move, thought nothing of her performance except what Terra wanted him to think. No one but Terra knew that it was, after all, only a performance.

It had been Terra's idea to spring Cinderblock, Plasmus, and Overload from their prison. It would show her master how dedicated she was to bringing down the Titans. Slade had congratulated his apprentice with pride for her delightfully sinister idea. In a rare slip, however, he overlooked the fact that Terra had been very specific about where to lure the Titans. But this suited Terra just fine.

"_Everything is under control_," Slade said, in malicious anticipation.

Terra had not bothered to correct him.

She went after Raven first, because she knew that it would be by far the hardest… for both of them.

It had hurt, really, to see the look in Raven's eyes as they fought. But Terra only made her sneer all the more cruel; said things that she had chosen beforehand, things that she knew would go straight to Raven's heart – Raven, who cared so deeply for her friends, whose trust had been given in the utmost faith – shattering her control. She had fixed an awful smile on her face as she taunted her former friend, almost comical in its forced intensity. She hoped that her cruelly stinging speech didn't sound as scripted to Slade's ears as it did to her own. Raven was too hurt and angry to sense any hint of Terra's sorrow. She was consumed with rage and pain.

Terra's fear of Raven's demonic form had been absolutely genuine.

But she had done what she came there to do. She had dragged Raven down, down… and Raven had choked and retched, her throat coated with mud, and for an instant, Terra's facade had faltered, and she looked with horrified eyes as Raven was dragged away from her, her eyes returning to violet in innocent panic. But…

"_Finish her." _Slade's voice demanded, and Terra placed, with some effort, the smirk back on her face and she told herself never again to take it off.

"Who's in control now?" Terra added softly, as a parting shot. Slade couldn't have known that he was the one being mocked.

And Raven fell, hateful with the pain of betrayal.

One Titan safe, four more to go.

Starfire came next. She was surprisingly easy to get out of the way because Cinderblock, though the lumbering hunk of concrete didn't know it, had done most of Terra's work for her. Starfire fell, and to Robin, it would seem as though she had simply disappeared, and he would have no way of following her.

As she departed, Terra laughed in triumph for Slade's benefit. She was glad that there had been no dramatic scene with Starfire as there had been with Raven, though. She wouldn't have been able to take it.

Two Titans safe, three more to go.

Cyborg and Beast Boy were, oddly enough, the easiest to save, just as Terra had suspected they would be. They would be easiest because they would require the most acting. All Terra had to do was tell herself again and again that by her actions they would be saved, though nobody could know it. She couldn't possibly let Beast Boy know it. So Terra kept her mask firmly in place, and her charade was flawless.

She split the floor beneath them with one easy gesture, and Cyborg plummeted into what would seem to him to be endless darkness, though Terra knew better.

Beast Boy, hanging over the edge, gazed down after his fallen friend, then up at her, where she stood just in front of him, looking down on him through her sneering mask.

"Hope you weren't expecting a good-bye kiss," she said, though it came out softer than she had intended it to. It stung Beast Boy nonetheless, as she had known it would. It stung her a little, too. She had never gotten to kiss Beast Boy. Slade had interrupted before it happened.

"Terra, you can't." was all Beast Boy said. But the words sent chills through her frame and shoved her heart up into her throat, and why, _why_ couldn't she stop looking into those green eyes of his? She was drowning in them, choking on them, as Raven had choked in the mud.

"Watch me." Was all she could say. Her eyes – the eyes of her mask - glowed yellow, and she couldn't look into his green eyes anymore, and the ground closed over Beast Boy with a rumbling finality.

"Terra!" he cried as the blackness surrounded him. And Terra set her jaw and fled, feeling as though she was trapped in a nightmare.

Four Titans safe. One more to go.

Slade surveyed her work, and Terra knew that he had not caught on to her secret. He was happy, he was proud of her. He saw each of the Titans as they fell, and he did not ever question where they landed. For land they most certainly did.

_"Our conquest is not yet complete," _he told Terra.

"I know," she said, and she was grateful that Slade could not see her at that moment, for surely he would have realized that her grotesque smile did not nearly reach her eyes.

Robin came last. Terra had known that Robin would be her real problem, and she was not mistaken. She sparred with the boy who had once been her leader, and Robin, his emotions already running high with worry for Starfire, had tried to convince her to come back to the side of Good; he had yelled at her, he had pleaded with her. And he was convincing, very convincing.

"Look at yourself, Terra!" He had demanded as he forced her to stare at her own reflection, her face pressed against a chain-link fence. "Is this really what you want to be?"

_No, never, _she answered silently, but she fought back against him with skill that nearly matched his own and she matched his protests with typical villain retorts that seemed to reel out of her mouth as though she had memorized them. In her ears they sounded almost childish; unreasonable and whiney. "I'm just _never_ going to be good enough for you, am I?" was one such response.

But still Robin would not give up. He was steadfast as always.

"I got out. So can you," He said, his voice strained with urgent honesty. And even in the midst of battle he could see the shred of truth that the other Titans had missed. "You can only save yourself." Robin told her, as calmly as if they had been sitting in the living room of Titans Tower instead of locked in combat.

_I know, I know, _she wanted to answer, but she didn't. "I. Don't. Need. Saving!" she had insisted instead. And as she spat the words at her former leader she knew that they were true. _I don't need saving. I _can_ save myself._

She kept telling herself that as Robin, too, fell.

She declared to Robin that she _wanted_ to be everything that she was. She declared that she wanted to 'annihilate' the Titans for Slade's benefit, because she knew he must be listening. She raised a boulder high over Robin's head and brought it swiftly crashing down.

She wondered how surprised Robin must have been when the boulder never hit him, and instead the ground beneath him gave way and he found himself falling, falling…

Though from Slade's point of view, it would look as though Robin had been crushed.

For Terra was in better control of her powers than even Slade knew.

When Robin hit the ground he would find himself in a long underground tunnel. It wouldn't matter which direction he chose to walk in, because they would both lead him to the same place.

Cyborg and Beast Boy would find that what had seemed to be a bottomless pit was actually a relatively short fall. They would walk through their underground tunnel and emerge in a large, open space with a few other entrances, and out of these other entrances would come Starfire and Raven.

Starfire, who had fallen through an opening in the jagged rocks before Robin could see where she had gone. And Raven, who had fallen through the mud into cleaner underground air. All the tunnels led to this opening. And the Titans of course could still locate each other with their communicators, which Terra had neglected to take from them.

She had chosen the location of all the attacks because they happened to be directly over these underground tunnels. Tunnels that Slade had made himself, incidentally. His giant metal worms had carved them beneath the city back when Terra had first joined the Titans, and Slade had forgotten about them in light of bigger and better plans.

And now Terra had used them to save her friends. Because if she hadn't found a way to make Slade believe that she truly despised them and was willing to kill them, she might have actually have been forced to do it. Now, when the Titans made their comeback, Terra would make her escape.

The Titans would be too furious at Terra to realize that they found themselves miraculously reunited and unharmed. They would be too busy making plans to bring her down. Terra was counting on this.

Because she knew without a doubt that if she had gone running back to her friends early enough in this ordeal that they would have helped her. They would have forgiven her.

But Terra could not bear the shame of being forgiven, not now. She didn't deserve it, and the guilt of forgiveness would eat at her always, until it drove her crazy. Terra knew that she could never go back to where, for a short time, she'd been happier than she had ever been.

But damned if she was going to stay with Slade.

Terra knew that she still had to stage one last scene.

When the Titans came to bring her down, and Terra knew it would be soon, she would be suddenly weak and terrified. She would be defeated. She would run, limping, back to Slade and put on a great display of being stricken with fear. She would tell him that she couldn't do this anymore. She would do whatever it took to leave and never come back. Slade would be livid that the Titans were still alive, but Terra knew full well that she was powerful enough to get away from him.

And finally this would end. Terra would cast off Slade's emblem, throw on her old clothes and run and run, and maybe when she was far enough away she would become herself again. The old Terra, who liked apple pie and theme park rides at night. The Terra who loved sleeping out-doors and whose favorite color was red. The Terra who wore a butterfly clip in her hair to keep it out of her eyes.

Terra stood on the rooftop of Titans Tower, looking out at the deserted city; the citizens having wisely evacuated when the earthquakes began. All of Jump City was tinted gray. Terra wished that her last memory of it could have been back when it was filled with life and color. But she knew that it would be that way again soon. The Titans would make sure of it.

She had been inside the Tower, looking for one last time at her old bedroom and the kitchen and the living room where she had made so many memories that she didn't want to forget, seeing as they were some of the best she had. But the huge Tower had been achingly empty, and it grew too lonesome and pushed Terra out. She knew she would have to leave the Tower soon, because any minute now the Titans would be returning, and Slade mustn't know.

For the first time in days, Terra's face was relaxed and natural. No sneering mask or cold yellow eyes. She wasn't free quite yet, but she felt better than she had in months.

Terra knew that she had saved her friends, even though no one else would ever know it. She was filled with a sense of unwavering self-righteousness that as a Teen Titan she had always lacked. She wondered, haltingly, if there had ever been a villain who didn't feel the exact same knowledge singing through them as she did now; the positive sureness that _I am right and I cannot lose. _It made her uncomfortable.

But she was not a hero and she was not a villain. She had been both, and now she wasn't anything. The two paths of heroism and villainy had twisted together in her mind, but she ignored them.

A hero would do what they _had_ to do, and a villain would do what they _wanted_ to do. Terra, searching in the more villainous part of herself, had found that she wanted to save her friends. Slade had made her into a villain, and villains didn't follow orders. Terra didn't follow hers. She did what she wanted to do, instead. Did that make her more villainous, or more heroic?

Out of the smog back on the mainland emerged a single figure. Slade. He seemed so small from where Terra was standing, yet it was still an ominous feeling, knowing that his one eye was undoubtedly fixed on her.

"So, apprentice," began Slade, his voice ringing clearly through the microphone in her ear. "Here we are at last. The city is ours, and the Teen Titans are no more."

Terra knew that he must hardly be able to make her out, Titans Tower being barely visible through the smoke and dust of destruction.

"Aren't you proud of what you've accomplished, Terra?" he asked.

The sun was rising, slowly, concealed by clouds.

Terra brushed her hair away from her face, just for a moment.

"I have absolutely no regrets," She said.

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AN: The title of this story is adapted from a line from the same song I quoted at the beginning. Flames will be used to bake brownies, but the flamers won't get any. That being said, review, please!_


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